Or so I thought. Suddenly, we were talking about VR gaming and the collective disappointment with how long new features were taking to be rolled into the Elite: Dangerous universe. As a software developer myself, I’m acutely familiar with how it’s produced. Prior experience with the world’s largest software production company, Microsoft, has helped that education and acquaint me with the most modern practices involved with the full software development lifecycle. I thought I’d bring this view to a pair of gaming consumers; one from New York and another a fellow Canadian who lives relatively close, geographically (which is not a given in the world’s second-largest country). CMDR IronJaguar, in particular, laid the heaviest expectations on Frontier (the producer of the Elite game series). Could he be convinced to be more understanding of the issues involved in producing Elite: Dangerous? And what about Frontier’s competitors? Where is Star Citizen? What about EndSpace and From Other Suns? Could they pose a threat to Elite’s dominance in the VR flight sim market at some point?

he year is 3304 and mankind has started to explore the galaxy in earnest with tens of thousands of humans fanning out across the cosmos thanks to affordable spacecraft being made available to people from various walks of life: explorers, bounty hunters, miners, exothropoligists and many others. Supported by other companies like Universal Cargographics, Cannon Research, the Aegis Corporation, DeLacy Spacecraft, Lakon Spaceways and many others, this intrepid group together with (the real) Frontier software development company has created an environment spanning our Milky Way galaxy, including 400+ billion unique star systems containing a smattering of eyeball-catching astronomical phenomena. Herein, spacecraft commanders (CMDRs) complete on missions for starport or political factions, pursue community goals with galactic impact and/or further the ambitions of humanity in their own unique way, or just trade ferrying cargo from one system that’s in demand in another. Against this background, you can follow the adventures of CMDR Trium Augus (yours truly) and watch the epic saga of those he deals with unfold. This is just the beginning of a universe Frontier calls “Elite Dangerous” and is the brainchild of David Braben; who created an old game for 8-bit computing platforms (like the Apple //e or Commodore-64) called “Elite” back in the mid-1980s. It is upon the legacy of the game (and its successors in the 1990s) that Elite Dangerous is built.

Click to launch INARA Radio player – which accompanies you playing Elite Dangerous!

Ongoing coverage of the events in this make-believe universe are presented in digest form here. But I encourage every reader to visit The AppRefactory Inc. on YouTube as soon as you’re finished with content presented here. My story is one handled in a video presentation that gains new contributions almost daily through the winter months and weekly at other points during the year.

Hope you’ll visit us soon!

Other background info on CMDR Trium is available at the following sites:

enying you’re guilty of something can be difficult when the rumor mill / charge keeps happening, Scott Adams reminds us in his recent blog entry. Indeed, proving a negative is impossible and leads to what scholars refer to as argumentumadignorantiam (argument from ignorance) wherein an argument is presumed true because it has not been proven false — a logical fallacy. Yet we fall prey to this one pretty easily and Adams cites the case of Donald Trump attempting to deny ongoing allegations of collusion with Russia during the most recent American presidential election. But is that what’s really going on here?

U.S. PresidentDonald J. Trump

Journalism is particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon because, out of a desire to “build the story” for readers, asking questions about something that didn’t demonstrably happen repeatedly actually contributes to it. What we all want to know simply is this: is there testable evidence that Trump colluded with Russia? Pure and simple. But with an ongoing investigation — about which readers will want reminders of in their sub-24-hour news cycle — updates will inevitably be desired. Also, it doesn’t hurt to repeat the question they’ll argue to see if anything inconsistent appears to quote, though over time and with many a practiced rehearsal this is less and less likely.

Instead of the constant clamour for updates, perhaps we’d all be better off letting the investigation conclude and fill our news cycle with whatever else is going on in the world; waiting patiently until the investigation comes back with a finding of no fault or charges. It’s Donald Trump, for goodness sake — it’s not like he’s avoiding making statements that anyone with half a brain would find morally reprehensible from one week to the next.

Sharing Icons

Support this author…

Maintaining a blog site like this takes a commitment of time to write and update material. Although I enjoy it, this commitment detracts from other activities I am involved with, through which I support myself. Your donations encourage me to stay on track, committed as a writer covering those topics which are of interest to you.

The Eclipse foundation recently released MicroProfile 2.2, helping developers to create microservices on top of EE 8. This release comes at the same time that Eclipse is taking over as steward of Java EE and rebranding it to Jakarta EE. By Erik Costlow

This panelists discuss the changes society has seen since the advent of social media and how they're building the next generation of software tools to protect against online harassment. By Leigh Honeywell, Danielle Leong, Sri Ponnada, Kat Fukui

Joy Gao talks about how database streaming is essential to WePay's infrastructure and the many functions that database streaming serves. She provides information on how the database streaming infrastructure was created & managed so that others can leverage their work to develop their own database streaming solutions. She goes over challenges faced w […]

An overview of how the InfoQ editorial team sees the "cloud" and "DevOps" topics evolving in 2019, which focuses on platforms and practices that are being de facto standards and emerging technologies. By Chris Swan, Daniel Bryant, Steffen Opel, Helen Beal, Manuel Pais

Amazon has added another set of new threat detections to its GuardDuty service in AWS. The three new threat detections are two new penetration testing detections and one policy violation detection. By Steef-Jan Wiggers

I think we’ve established there is a bit of a stereotype for men here... but there’s gonna be a stereo type for the other side too (women) cause that’s just how it works. Just because there’s a gender in the name, doesn’t mean other genders aren’t welcome, which is the case here.

Well you are welcome to fly with us if you want to be a part of the squadron - actually winging up with other players is not mandatory, you can still stick to solo but be part of our group if you like :) - o7

Well Chaps it's been a while but we're back. Running like the Thargoids are chasing us to catch back up with #DW2 tonight from 8pm UTC in @EliteDangerous over @Twitch http://twitch.tv/smiter1983 #TeamXebon

It doesn't bother (me, in fact). That was just to say. I won't ever create a "women" group. Cause diversity is interesting. And if Fathers have to wait for their children's sleep, I think that's because they care. So I don't throw the stone. 1/2